Realizing people don’t want “business tablets,” Cisco kills the Cius

Businesses don't buy tablets, people buy tablets.

In a move that should surprise approximately no one, Cisco has decided to end development on the Cisco Cius tablet. Actually, the move may be surprising to those of you who never realized that Cisco built a tablet at all.

Trying to ride the wave of tablet popularity, Cisco released the Cius a year ago with a heavily customized version of Android, focusing on the security, collaboration, and videoconferencing needs of businesses. A business-focused app store, AppHQ, was unveiled along with the option for businesses to host their own private app stores. But it's all pretty much over now, as Cisco said yesterday that it will "no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor," continuing to offer the device only "in a limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases."

Cius wasn't killed by the market-leading iPad and Kindle Fire; it was killed by consumers. While work laptops and desktops are still primarily provisioned to employees by corporate IT shops, mobile devices follow the opposite path, being brought into work environments by employees. Smartphones shifted from a business-driven model dependent on the BlackBerry to a consumer-driven one focused on the iPhone and Android devices, but tablets have never been a business-first device (with the exception of some Windows tablets deployed for industry-specific use cases).

Cisco tried to force its own model onto the tablet market, but Senior Vice President OJ Winge wrote in the Cisco blog that it ultimately became clear that "employees are bringing their preferences to work and BYOD ('Bring Your Own Device' to work) is the new norm." Instead of developing its own walled garden, Cisco will focus on building its collaboration products like Jabber and WebEx for a wide variety of operating systems and devices.

You can't really blame Cisco for failing in the tablet market, since pretty much everyone else has, too. Cius had a lower profile than the HP TouchPad and BlackBerry PlayBook, and thus its failure is less embarrassing and damaging to the overall health of the company. Moreover, Cisco does have successful collaboration products for businesses, and they're already available on the major mobile platforms. Cisco may have a bright future in developing business services for tablet users—it just won't be the one making the hardware.

Promoted Comments

tablets have never been a business-first device (with the exception of some Windows tablets deployed for industry-specific use cases

This hits the nail square on the head. There are a few industry-specific cases where I suspect company-provided and -configured tablets will be the norm (doctors making their rounds in a hospital is one that comes immediately to mind). But those markets aren't going to be big enough to support dedicated hardware or customized OS versions. They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

I saw this at a product demo last year and it was actually really impressive. They should've stuck with it a bit because they had something really good going. It hooked directly up into an IP phone dock and doubled as the users workstation.

tablets have never been a business-first device (with the exception of some Windows tablets deployed for industry-specific use cases

This hits the nail square on the head. There are a few industry-specific cases where I suspect company-provided and -configured tablets will be the norm (doctors making their rounds in a hospital is one that comes immediately to mind). But those markets aren't going to be big enough to support dedicated hardware or customized OS versions. They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

Working at a business that buys its sales staff iPads, I think the premise of the headline is false. But there's no point in buying a business-only tablet. If it's not an all-purpose consumer friendly device it won't get used. Just like any other tablet that's not an iPad, there are probably more obvious reasons for this product's failure: 1) everyone wants an iPad, and 2) $1000 bucks!

Given that ipad seems to get used mostly by management, and then mostly for email and document (PDF etc.) reading, aiming this at collaboration and video conferencing was off target.

That the main dock was aimed at phonecalls, not text input did not help either.

I do not have much love for Apple as a business (too much of a walled garden for my liking), when their initial design for the iPad was clever. keyboard dock, 4:3 ratio (much smaller difference to paper than 16:9), and a version of iWork reading in the app store on launch.

Android on the other hand seems to be treated as a oversized media player, and Google have yet to produce a Google Docs suite.

Before the ipad, people did not buy tablets either. Nobody has ever bought client computers of any kind from Cisco. So no real conclusion can be drawn from this event except that Cisco adopted a strategy that was likely not to work and it did not work.

When this story says, "Trying to ride the wave of tablet popularity...," it really means, "Trying to ride the wave of iPad popularity." If it weren't for the iPad, none of this development would have happened.

Perhaps it was meant to say not in volume? My employer purchased some tablets for use in a clinical setting years ago, but we long ago scrapped them as they were simply too cumbersome to use. The iPad succeeds because it is usable as a tablet, something that is a stretch to claim about earlier attempts.

As far as Cisco's strategy, I just don't see how they expected it to work. This is commodity hardware, just like a PC. Why buy a specialized device when software can be designed and purchased to accomplish the same thing? And all without getting locked into a hardware vendor. Well, I say that as my employers purchases only iPads for business use. In theory we could use other devices though as the apps we use are available on Android as well.

They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

I'm becoming more and more certain that the focus of Win8 isn't for businesses to pick it up (as is partially evident by the inability to join domains), but rather as a consumer device in which they will buy one and bring it into work. Expecting the behaviour of buisnesses to change, to buy tablets for a large number of employees instead of just for the higher levels, is still highly unlikely in my view.

tablets have never been a business-first device (with the exception of some Windows tablets deployed for industry-specific use cases

This hits the nail square on the head. There are a few industry-specific cases where I suspect company-provided and -configured tablets will be the norm (doctors making their rounds in a hospital is one that comes immediately to mind). But those markets aren't going to be big enough to support dedicated hardware or customized OS versions. They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

I agree with some of the other statements about the pricing for tablets being a bit out of the ballpark for consumer devices, but I wonder how many here actually realize there is a wealth of really great tablet models nobody has ever heard of because they were never marketed to the general public.

The HP Slate and Fujitsu Q550 series both come to mind instantly. Both have drawbacks, primarily due to Intel graphics drivers rather than the platform, execution, or design. The majority of sales of both has been to corporate customers. As for Cisco getting out, well that makes sense. Outside of networking equipment, everything else they produce is nearly exclusively rebranded mid-grade product. For example Qnap NAS devices immediately spring to mind.

It has seemed that the reason Windows tablet products have been restricted to the corporate side and not gotten to the consumer side is largely because Windows XP, Vista, and 7 have not been designed around the touch paradigm. This has the drawback that programs written for those platforms interact poorly with touch. Once you get a good idea of what programs work well as well as how best to adapt the UI to touch, it's not a bad experience. It is not going to be the iOS or Android experience where you just install applications whenever and run with it. Instead it takes planning and validation of the use case, which is where corporations are more likely to make the time investment.

Cisco has been cutting all kinds of stuff lately, in an attempt to "Get back to its core business" . Most of the consumer-oriented stuff is being chopped. Flip video is gone, Umi is gone, that ridiculous pseudotablet home wireless manager thing is gone.... it's been good for the company IMO.

The Cius was a pretty cool idea, but ultimately it's pretty easily replaced by an existing tablet that's half the price, whether iPad, Windows or Android.

tablets have never been a business-first device (with the exception of some Windows tablets deployed for industry-specific use cases

This hits the nail square on the head. There are a few industry-specific cases where I suspect company-provided and -configured tablets will be the norm (doctors making their rounds in a hospital is one that comes immediately to mind). But those markets aren't going to be big enough to support dedicated hardware or customized OS versions. They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

Right now, iPads are prevalent in the system I work in (hospital) as the doctor's are bringing in their own tablets.

They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

I'm becoming more and more certain that the focus of Win8 isn't for businesses to pick it up (as is partially evident by the inability to join domains), but rather as a consumer device in which they will buy one and bring it into work. Expecting the behaviour of buisnesses to change, to buy tablets for a large number of employees instead of just for the higher levels, is still highly unlikely in my view.

Windows 8 can join domains. Windows RT cannot. I'm not sure why an OS aimed at the Android and iOS crowd is constantly being compared to the business class OS. Win RT can access domain resources with credentials just as well as iOS and Android.

I'm not sure why this differentiation is such a big deal. As the Windows tablet landscape develops, the choices between x86 (Atom, Brazos, i5) and ARM will be there for consumers, corporate and individual, to decide. This is about as big of a deal as complaining about Home editions of Windows not being able to join domains.

As for any issues which might be brought about x86 vs ARM power consumption. In the tablet form factor, there are plenty of Atom SKUs which compete just fine with ARM and are viable choices at little additional cost. Even though the Atom platform is plagued by issues due to GMA graphics, this can only get better as adoption rates go up and push Intel to do the work on the graphics drivers. Also, the Atom platform offers several benefits over the current ARM based offerings in terms of performance. The most obvious is bus bandwidth to storage and RAM interfaces. ARM based hardware can't get anywhere close to the 100+ MB/s transfer rates over SATA to SSD drives in any incarnations which I have seen tested. A few months ago there was a story about iOS devices and the disdain Jobs had expressed over a year ago about flash storage speed. This isn't even a relevant issue in the Atom world.

I saw this at a product demo last year and it was actually really impressive. They should've stuck with it a bit because they had something really good going. It hooked directly up into an IP phone dock and doubled as the users workstation.

Even better it tied into the phone infrastructure so your tablet/phone stayed with with you.

They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

I'm becoming more and more certain that the focus of Win8 isn't for businesses to pick it up (as is partially evident by the inability to join domains), but rather as a consumer device in which they will buy one and bring it into work. Expecting the behaviour of buisnesses to change, to buy tablets for a large number of employees instead of just for the higher levels, is still highly unlikely in my view.

Windows 8 can join domains. Windows RT cannot. I'm not sure why an OS aimed at the Android and iOS crowd is constantly being compared to the business class OS. Win RT can access domain resources with credentials just as well as iOS and Android.

My mistake, winRT.. and I agree, but people hold MS to a higher unobtainable standard.

aaronb1138 wrote:

I'm not sure why this differentiation is such a big deal. As the Windows tablet landscape develops, the choices between x86 (Atom, Brazos, i5) and ARM will be there for consumers, corporate and individual, to decide. This is about as big of a deal as complaining about Home editions of Windows not being able to join domains.

As for any issues which might be brought about x86 vs ARM power consumption. In the tablet form factor, there are plenty of Atom SKUs which compete just fine with ARM and are viable choices at little additional cost. Even though the Atom platform is plagued by issues due to GMA graphics, this can only get better as adoption rates go up and push Intel to do the work on the graphics drivers. Also, the Atom platform offers several benefits over the current ARM based offerings in terms of performance. The most obvious is bus bandwidth to storage and RAM interfaces. ARM based hardware can't get anywhere close to the 100+ MB/s transfer rates over SATA to SSD drives in any incarnations which I have seen tested. A few months ago there was a story about iOS devices and the disdain Jobs had expressed over a year ago about flash storage speed. This isn't even a relevant issue in the Atom world.

That will be the tradeoff, more power friendly devices based upon ARM do not need those transfer rates (it's a tablet after all). While one day Intel might finally get graphics right.

I'm looking forward to getting an ARM winRT device, because, simply, I do not want the desktop on my tablet.

" a wealth of really great tablet models nobody has ever heard of because they were never marketed to the general public."

I suspect the problem is YOU define "really great tablet" as "can run Windows software" whereas everyone else in the world defines "really great tablet" by the quality of the screen, the battery life, the touch interface, and the match between the software and the input/display.

But man can I watch some netflix and surf the web on it... I still find the platform quite restrictive for general use - it is great for my email, calendars, and netflix and websites... It sits on the coffee table most of the time..

tablets have never been a business-first device (with the exception of some Windows tablets deployed for industry-specific use cases

This hits the nail square on the head. There are a few industry-specific cases where I suspect company-provided and -configured tablets will be the norm (doctors making their rounds in a hospital is one that comes immediately to mind). But those markets aren't going to be big enough to support dedicated hardware or customized OS versions. They'll likely be served by generic Windows 8 tablets locked down with policies, the way many corporate PCs have been for years.

It's a bit early to be betting on Windows 8 in this space. First of all, tablets before the iPad were abject failures (in spite of some 10 or 15 happy users on the third planet from Sol). So Microsoft's and Windows' track record in this space is worse off than Apple's with zero experience a mere 26 months ago.

Secondly, I'd say that from what I'm reading so far, Windows 8 is going to fail in the tablet race simply because it's trying to shoehorn a desktop experience into a tablet, and the confusing rules about what parts will run on what pieces of hardware and what is restricted and what is not.

Call me skeptical, but I suspect Windows 9 is going to have a much better chance of doing it than Windows 8. Microsoft is in denial about the future of operating systems and the devices they run on. They think people want Windows as it is on the desktop. They are wrong. They want their mobile phone OS on a tablet. Ballmer doesn't get that. Does it matter if anyone at Microsoft besides him does?

But man can I watch some netflix and surf the web on it... I still find the platform quite restrictive for general use - it is great for my email, calendars, and netflix and websites... It sits on the coffee table most of the time..

That's YOU. Just yesterday a very powerful HTML editor was released for the iPad. Diet Coda (named for its equivalent desktop HTML editor). There are plenty of other applications out there that real work is being done on tablets. Sure, not as much as can be done with a keyboard, mouse and desktop computer. But it was long ago when it was time to retire that old meme.

Working at a business that buys its sales staff iPads, I think the premise of the headline is false. But there's no point in buying a business-only tablet. If it's not an all-purpose consumer friendly device it won't get used. Just like any other tablet that's not an iPad, there are probably more obvious reasons for this product's failure: 1) everyone wants an iPad, and 2) $1000 bucks!

To be fair, what is your sales staff using them for?

Are they using them as a business device? Or as a marketing tool for front facing customers?

If it is a marketing tool, I think the headline is more than fair.

You can swipe a tablet in a car dealership too as part of some kind of promotion, but that does not really make it a business tablet..

But man can I watch some netflix and surf the web on it... I still find the platform quite restrictive for general use - it is great for my email, calendars, and netflix and websites... It sits on the coffee table most of the time..

That's YOU. Just yesterday a very powerful HTML editor was released for the iPad. Diet Coda (named for its equivalent desktop HTML editor). There are plenty of other applications out there that real work is being done on tablets. Sure, not as much as can be done with a keyboard, mouse and desktop computer. But it was long ago when it was time to retire that old meme.

Give me a break... A mobile laptop - 11-13in with a multi monitor setup is always going to be better... I can work on my 30in screen, and then take my work with me on my device that is not much bigger than an iPad... Dont get me wrong I think they are great devices... But I am not creating proposals on the thing, nor am I working on my budget sheets with it...

I am sure people are doing real work on them... but are they actually being more productive? Or just trendy....

We got one of those CIUS tablets last year before it was released to do some field trials with it. When I heard that we paid $2000 for it, I knew it was going to be a failure.

The phone only works when the tablet is docked, so heaven forbid you undock the tablet, and leave it somewhere on accident... Then your phone doesn't work anymore... That was the main reason I thought it was a POS... That and it kept crashing randomly...